Nn Delays Action On Gloucester Bid To Join Trash Panel

City's Membership Questioned

January 09, 1991|By MICHAEL S.C. CLAFFEY Staff Writer

NEWPORT NEWS — The Newport News City Council Tuesday night delayed action on a request by Gloucester County to join the regional trash authority after two councilman and two members of a citizens group raised questions about the city's own participation in the authority.

Before City Council voted to postpone action on Gloucester's request to join the Virginia Peninsulas Public Service Authority, or VPPSA, Councilman Marty Williams slammed Gloucester for having a "very poor attitude" toward the venture.

Williams, noting that Gloucester officials had sought assurances no landfill would be placed in their county if they joined, said Gloucester is "coming in with a very bad attitude.

"When you want to join a regional effort, you've got to bring something to the table," Williams said. "They're bringing nothing to the table. They want to join VPPSA because they want to take their trash someplace else."

The council meeting was attended by the two Gloucester supervisors opposed to their county joining the regional authority, George C. Sterling and Benjamin F. Seawell.

Both said they came simply to observe and Sterling said he agreed with Williams' characterization of Gloucester's motives for joining the authority.

"That was basically what the board said in wanting to join," Sterling

said.

The Newport News council's delay followed an afternoon work session during which Williams and Councilman Terry Martin expressed strong doubts about the benefits of participating in the authority, which includes governments from the rural Middle Peninsula and the suburban and urban Peninsula.

Martin said Newport News might gain more by cooperating with cities in south Hampton Roads or with the trash authority serving the Richmond area than by joining the peninsulas authority.

The vote to allow Gloucester into the agency was also opposed by two members of Concerned Denbigh Citizens, Jan Gray, the group's president, and Charles Pfeifer, chairman of its environmental committee.

Both based their objections on the authority's advocacy in the state legislature of a bill that would give local governments control over how and where garbage is collected and disposed.

The legislation would be anti-competitive, the two men said, because it would grant trash authorities monopoly power over trash disposal. The city is opposed to the legislation despite the authority's support.

Underlying the Denbigh citizens' concern, Gray said later, is that the legislation is intended to ensure trash authorities fuel for incinerator plants.

The issue of building an incinerator plant was raised by council members during the afternoon work session and Denbigh has previously been mentioned as a possible site for an incinerator.

Frank Miller, the regional trash authority's executive director, told council members that the agency has no plans to construct an incinerator and that he has no objection to the agency's making a formal commitment on the issue.

He also said the bill giving local governments authority over trash collection and disposal is needed to obtain lower interest rates on bonds issued by the authority.

Williams said at the afternoon session that he is concerned that the operating rules of the authority will allow localities to benefit from joint projects early on but then refuse to cooperate when it would be to their detriment later.

"What if we open our composting facility to those people and then down the road they don't participate in the same spirit" in projects that Newport News needs, he said.

There is no guarantee, he said, that after participating in a regional recycling effort, the rural counties won't say, "Hey Newport News, Hampton and York County, you're not bringing your garbage over here. Wouldn't it be nice to have a guarantee?"

Miller and others noted, however, that King and Queen County has already volunteered to create a regional landfill that is in the planning stages.

Martin said he believes Newport News is shortchanged by the current organization of the authority, which gives each member a single vote on the agency's governing board. That concern was echoed by Gray of the Denbigh citizens group.

"One vote out of 11 when you're providing 35 or 40 percent of the money and of the garbage, this gives me a problem," Martin said.

While agreeing with the motion to delay the vote on Gloucester, council members Joe Frank and Bill Fitzgerald expressed support for the regional agency.

"I don't think that long term, any locality has the capacity to handle this problem on their own," said Frank.